I attempted to approach her, but a police officer stepped in front of me.
“Could I talk to her?” I gestured toward Ms. Jones.
“Do you have information?” The officer’s voice was terse.
“Questions.”
“Call the station for an appointment.” The officer handed me a business card and turned to speak to a student who had tears trickling down her cheeks.
My night was haunted by dreams of an army of raincoat-clad men and women, marching along the railroad track, stepping in and out of boxcars. I woke up tired, no closer to answers than I had been when I fell asleep.
* * *
Two days later, Sanjay and I drove to southwest Houston. We knocked on a dark-brown door, and a tall woman named Aliya answered. She led us to her living room, dark with burgundy curtains drawn across the windows. Incense smoke made my eyes water. A couple, Rana and Ahmed Masood, sat on a cream-colored sofa, each clutching a mug of tea.
Their daughter Nadia had not lived at the university. Instead, she stayed with Aliya, her mother’s cousin. Each morning, Aliya dropped Nadia downtown, where she caught the Metro Rail to campus.
“She didn’t have many friends,” explained Aliya. “Being a Muslim from India, she didn’t fit in with the other Indians or Pakistanis. So she studied. She was doing well—she was searching for jobs and looking to change her visa status. She might even have met someone . . . Sometimes she came back late. She was a quiet girl and never told me who was giving her rides.”
Rana Masood adjusted her dupatta scarf and dabbed her tears. “We didn’t want her to go to America. Everyone warned us. But she wanted to study computer science. She got a scholarship from our community association, and she got a visa.”
Ahmed Masood hunched his shoulders. Sweat broke out on his forehead and his lips trembled. “Our community raised money for our tickets. We just want to bury our daughter and return home. But the police won’t release her body. The time to bury her in accordance with Muslim practice has slipped away. She remains in the morgue . . .”
Rana Masood tugged my hand. Her palm was sweaty. “I don’t trust the police here. But I found Nadia’s diary.” Reaching into her purse, she drew out a notebook. “She didn’t write much.”
A few pages were filled with handwriting belonging to a person who spent more time on a machine than with a pen. I scanned the text, gleaning that Nadia had met a man who sometimes drove her home from campus. He takes me to dinner in a hotel—some neighborhood called the Galleria. We hold hands. He listens to me and understands.
I flicked to the last page: I promised him I wouldn’t write more, but one day I’ll share the story of the man I love.
* * *
Thirty minutes before I was to meet Luis at the bar, my phone rang.
“Can you meet me by the cemetery instead?” Luis stammered. “There’s graffiti on my wife’s grave.” He said the cemetery closed at sunset, and an iron bar blocked the entrance. “You can park across the street and enter from the side. I’ll wait for you.”
Making sure my phone was charged, I drove up Lawndale. Darkness had fallen, and there was no moon. As I pulled up across from the cemetery, I saw Luis waiting for me. I parked my car and crossed the street to join him.
Luis and I walked across wet grass to the curling cemetery road, a labyrinth with which he seemed familiar. I had been to Forest Park Cemetery just twice: once to attend Alicia’s funeral, and the second time for the smaller service for Maria Lee, who was buried in the mortuary since her mother could not afford a grave. Those burials were my first encounter with any US cemeteries. Forest Park’s grassy landscape stretched over hundreds of acres—the opposite of what I knew in Karachi, where bodies were buried on top of each other.
“Thanks for meeting me here,” Luis mumbled. “I don’t trust cops.” His eyes were teary and his hair disheveled.
I glanced around at the winding road, lined by pink and white azaleas. Far away, police sirens competed with the hum of the nearby freeway. Occasionally, a roar erupted from airplanes landing or taking off at Hobby Airport.
Finally, Luis stopped in front of a grave. The tombstone had been knocked flat.
I aimed my telephone’s flashlight at the flat stone. “This is not your wife’s grave! Who’s Joanna Martinez?” I turned to face him.
Luis’s face was shadowed. His eyebrows seemed thicker and his arms were long as he lunged for me. “Don’t move,” he whispered.
Though Luis’s frame was not much larger than mine, his arms felt like an iron belt. I clamped my teeth on his shoulder. He winced, loosening his hold. Squirming away, I folded one leg to knee his groin, but he thrust me onto the wet grass. I landed on my back, feeling scratchy stalks push against my shirt and jeans. The scent of jasmine from a nearby tomb clung to my nostrils, contrasting with the danger.
“What’re you doing?” My heart pounded so loudly, I could feel palpitations through my chest. “We’re not near your wife’s grave!”
“Shut up, bitch,” he muttered. He closed his fist and punched my right cheek.
My face tingled, but despite the pain, I registered that Luis’s hands were covered with latex gloves. I called out with as loud a voice as I could muster, “We’re close to the children’s grave site! Why’d you bring me here?”
He grabbed my shoulders and shook me, causing my teeth to chatter.
“You should’ve gone back to where you came from! Too late now, bitch.” His voice was a hiss. Pressing his knees into my stomach, he wrenched my body to pull off my sweatshirt.
I thrashed my legs and tried to call for help, but Luis pushed his knees harder into my gut and slapped my cheek. I fell back, and he returned to twisting my hoodie to make a rope.
Just as he leaned forward to wind the fabric around my throat, I saw Luis shiver. Cold metal touched the back of his neck. He turned to see six plainclothes police officers surrounding us, one pressing a .45 caliber pistol into his back.
* * *
“Why didn’t you tell me you suspected Luis, and that you were talking to the police? You could be dead!” Sanjay’s lower lip protruded, making him look ten years old.
I leaned back on my sofa and pressed an ice pack against my cheek, now padded with a bandage. “You were out of town. Remember I told you that Luis was being creepy? I had to do something.”
“I don’t understand why he went after you.” Sanjay removed his baseball hat and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Maybe Luis thought I was talking too much? I had a weird feeling when he asked me to meet at a bar. So I went to HPD’s homicide department and talked to Henrietta Jones. Remember, I saw her at the railway track? Even though I had no evidence—just a gut feeling—she listened to me. Maybe because she’s a woman too. Or maybe because we’re each working in terrains where we’re outsiders. Anyway, she said the story was going cold. No one wanted to talk to cops, especially not Asian immigrants. My fear made sense to her, so she agreed to have me shadowed.
“Her team set up a wire on my phone so they could tap into my conversation with Luis, both live and on the phone, while also tracking our movement.” I sucked the lemon wedge in my glass of water. “We were supposed to meet at Stephanie’s Ice House, but he changed the plan at the last moment. When they heard him mention his wife’s grave, the cops went to her tomb. I kept talking, trying to give them clues. Still, it took them time to find us. If they’d arrived a few minutes later, I wouldn’t be here!”
There was a knock on my front door, and I paused. Sanjay answered, returning with Henrietta Jones.
“Thank you, Mona Naeem! You led us to a mass murderer,” she said, perching at the edge of an armchair. Henrietta frowned, which made her look older than her fifty years. “Luis wasn’t on our list because he had an alibi for each murder. But now we know his alibis were army veterans like him. They covered for him.”
Sanjay and I listened, keeping our eyes fixed on her.
Henrietta continued: “His real name is
Charles Wilson, a veteran from upstate New York. He used stolen identities. If he’s who we suspect him to be, he might have killed more than six women in different cities. He’s a bragger. Hates immigrants, especially women. They shouldn’t procreate, he told us. He married Alicia so he could maintain a front, but he always intended to kill her and leave Houston. Maybe he killed her sooner than planned because she found out about a girlfriend . . . He had four flip phones on him. Different numbers. All messages deleted, and a different name for each phone.” She paused. “He’d studied Spanish. Liked to pretend to be an immigrant himself. Helped him gain trust with the women he victimized.”
I took a gulp of water while digesting her news.
“And you? Maybe he thought you were getting too close. We’ll find out.” Henrietta stood up, her shoulders sloping. “Thank you for leading us to Charles. This will be a long night.”
After letting Henrietta out, Sanjay crept close to me. We fell asleep curled against each other’s bodies.
* * *
I poured myself a glass of ice water and stepped into the steamy night to sit on my front steps. Inside, my belongings were packed in boxes. The semester had ended without me completing even one class. I was going to move into Sylvia’s house for a month, finish my papers, and then spend the rest of the summer in Karachi.
As always, Jefferson Street was quiet. Rivulets streamed from my walkway to the street, reminders of the afternoon rain, and the warm air felt like a clammy towel wrapped around my body. Grackles croaked from a nearby tree, and when Raincoat Hombre appeared below the silver streetlight, I nearly choked on the lemon in my mouth.
“Howdy,” he called.
“Howdy,” I responded, using a word I had never before dared.
He moved closer. I saw that he had a furrowed forehead, shaggy white eyebrows, and long silver hair.
“I’ve seen you before,” he said.
“I’ve seen you too.”
“You shouldn’t be out alone,” he said.
“The killer was caught.” My black eyes met his brown.
“I know—I saw your photo in the news.”
I blushed. Over the last month, I had been featured in more television interviews than I would be for the rest of my life.
“Why’d you stop walking?” I had more questions I didn’t ask: why Thursday nights, why after the train went by, why the raincoat even when temperatures soared? But I decided to swig water instead. After all, I had solved the bigger mystery.
Everyone in Houston now knew Luis’s—aka Charles’s—story. He had served two terms in Iraq and Afghanistan and been diagnosed with PTSD. Upon completing his Afghanistan assignment, he returned to New York, where he inherited family money. He was an only child. After his mother passed away, he moved across the country without leaving a trail. The Lawndale house—like previous homes in which he had lived—was owned by a fellow veteran who vouched for him whenever needed. When Charles applied for jobs, he used fake identities and never registered at veteran centers. Before Houston, he had lived in Miami, Mobile, and New Orleans, where he dated and killed at least eight women from countries including Mexico, India, Panama, Indonesia, and Guatemala.
“I don’t discriminate,” he had bragged in court, choosing to defend himself without a lawyer. “I hate all immigrants—especially women, ’cause they breed like rats. Sex I had to have, but I cut my juices off. Couldn’t mix with those women.”
Raincoat Hombre stood a few feet away from me. “I live in Montrose, but I explore at night. That’s what insomniacs do. I walk different neighborhoods: East End, Second Ward, Fifth Ward, Third Ward, Freedmen’s Town. I stopped coming here when I noticed a car following me.” He looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “And after the murders, I decided to give the East End a break.” He turned to glance at the curve of the new moon. “See you next week?”
I nodded, not bothering to tell him that the following week I would be in a different East End house, on the other side of the railroad track. If he walked as much as he said he did, I would encounter him again. Probably while sitting on Sylvia’s steps, brooding over whether to proceed with my doctorate, accept the job offer from the Houston police, or return to Pakistan for good.
Coat swirling around him, Raincoat Hombre navigated my walkway, turned right, and headed toward the railway track.
JAMIE’S MOTHER
by Stephanie Jaye Evans
Sunset Heights
She was walking through the streets at midnight because she had a man to meet, she was carrying a gun because she was going to kill him, and she was wearing high heels because she hadn’t thought it through.
* * *
For the first two hours, she sat by Jamie’s sleeping, dreaming body and ignored the pings his phone made. He lay on her couch, curled to fit his frame in its embrace.
She got a stack of clean white washcloths. Held them under the faucet and wrung them out, restacked and covered them with plastic wrap. Put them in the refrigerator. Then, one by one, she took them out and used them to bathe his face, as if he had the kind of fever that could be relieved with cool cloths. The kind that could be relieved by a mother.
He murmured in his sleep. Smiled, lifted his brows, sank more deeply in. She pushed his hair from his face. Her hand stopped at his temple, at the tiny dimple of a measles scar. Oh.
She remembered him in her arms. Solid and muscular even at four, bigger than the other children. The way his heavy head felt against her breast as she rocked him.
His phone pinged, facedown on the coffee table. A quick pool of light, then draining away.
In his jacket pocket, she found a pack of cigarettes. She went to the front door, disarmed the alarm, unlocked the door, and realized she didn’t have a lighter. She took a box of matches from the utility drawer and carried them with the cigarettes to the front porch.
They’d bought this town house, close to Downtown, in this still-iffy but gentrifying Heights neighborhood, when Jamie had graduated from high school and left for college. They didn’t need the big house anymore or the good schools and they didn’t want the commute. They were happy here for two years.
She struck the match against the side of the box, sniffed the sharp bite, watched the pure flame spring up. Lit the cigarette and drew on it hard. She hadn’t smoked since college, but you don’t forget how. She tilted her head back and let the smoke spiral from her mouth. She used to look sexy when she smoked—men told her so. She leaned on the railing and peered down into the flower boxes. The cyclamen she’d put out for Christmas had taken a beating and were spattered with mud from yesterday’s rain. She rubbed at them with her thumb; the petals were stained.
This new white town house was three blocks off 610. Closer than they’d wanted to be—you could hear the freeway traffic. That meant it cost less. Jamie was going to a private university. They were being careful.
She sat on the glider, moored to the front porch by a chain thick as her wrist—the sort you’d imagine holding the Queen Mary fast. Her husband bought it the morning they woke to find all the new townhomes on their block, a block dotted with crumbling shotgun houses and an auto-body store, had their porch furniture stolen. Only theirs was left, which was so funny. Kenneth went to C&D Hardware on 11th Street and came home with this absurd chain, and that made her laugh even more. First he’d been cross with her, then he laughed too, and they went upstairs and made love on the new bed they’d bought to match this new house and new way of living. They pretended the traffic noise was a river.
She got up and poked a hole in the soil of the flower box, dropped in the finished cigarette butt, covered it, and patted it down. She wiped her hand on her suit and went back in, locked the door, set the alarm.
Her son slept on. Happy. A faint smile on his face, the kind of smile a full and content baby makes when his mouth falls away from your nipple, eyes closed and lips wet with your milk.
He was still beautiful. Not the way he was when he played football. He’d been huge then�
�she and Kenneth could hardly believe they’d made this massive golden man. It had been so sweet to go to Jamie’s games and hear his name called, the crowd roaring for him. The golden muscled mass of him racing down the field.
He was beautiful. Not the way he was then. Not like a giant. A god.
He was beautiful like a tubercular. Like a Spanish martyr.
Like a heroin addict.
The first time, he’d gone into rehab straight from school. His coach put him on the plane, so they didn’t get to say goodbye. Only a phone call. When the phone call was over, Kenneth turned to her and said, “Was that him? I don’t think that was him. It didn’t sound like him.”
She remembered when they sent his clothes home. Boxes and boxes. This was, oh, a year ago. Her husband was gone by then. They blamed each other. They blamed themselves. She couldn’t bear his face—his eyebrows just like Jamie’s. Bird-wing eyebrows.
That day, the FedEx man piled the boxes on the front porch. She came out and dragged one into the dining room, and the FedEx man brought the rest into the house. She’d tried to give him money, fumbling in her purse, then upending it on the floor and scrabbling for dollars, holding out a fistful.
She’d locked the door, set the alarm, and gone into the kitchen for a glass of ice, a bottle of bourbon, and a paring knife. Kneeling on the hardwood floor, she filled the glass with bourbon, took a drink, and sliced open the first box. Jamie’s smell, faint, rose from the box. She put her face to the crack in the cardboard box and breathed in. Over and over. Great breaths of him. The way she’d put her face against his newborn skin and breathed in the sweet hay smell of this living, perfect child God had given her, after all the doctors told her it couldn’t happen.
That day, sitting among the boxes, she poured another drink, then fitted her hand into the slot and felt softness. She pulled out his shirts, one after the other, sky blue and pink and lilac and butter yellow—all the colors Lauren made polo shirts in. Sixteen of them. Made of really soft cotton, like baby clothes.
She pulled out his clothes and school books and the notebooks filled with his tiny, cramped handwriting and bordered with doodles—monster bodies with human faces and trees with cereal boxes hanging like fruit. The invitations and the dried-up boutonniere still pinned to the jacket lapel. Everything she pulled from the box, she laid on top of her heart. A business communication textbook that cost more than three hundred dollars: she put the six-pound book on her heart. Seven pairs of Levi’s 501s: seven pounds on her heart. A T-shirt: six ounces. That made an ounce too much. Her heart was crushed under the weight and she crumpled, resting her face on the smooth, cool wood. She held Jamie’s T-shirt to her face and smelled him. Then she lost herself, screaming, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, baby, and she screamed at her God, who had not protected her son although, God knew, she was on her knees every night praying for his deliverance. Promising God anything, anything, anything, only please God, please. Please.
Houston Noir Page 20
